I awoke a little after midnight perfectly composed, and suffering only from the weal that the cord had made across my chest. Before a table, and his countenance lighted by a single lantern, sat the captain. His features expressed a depth of grief and a remorse that were genuine. He sat motionless, with his eyes fixed upon my cot: my face he could not see, owing to the depth of the shadow in which I lay. I moved: he advanced to my cot with the gentleness of a woman, and softly uttered:-- "Ralph, my dear boy, do you sleep?" The tones of his voice fell soothingly upon my ear like the music of a mother's prayer. "No, Captain Reud; but I am very thirsty." In an instant he was at my side with some weak wine and water. I took it from the hand of him whom, a few hours before, in my animosity I could have slain. "Ralph," said he, as he received back the tumbler, "Ralph, are we friends?" "Oh! Captain Reud, how could you treat a poor lad thus, who respected, who loved you so much?" "I was mad--do you forgive me, Ralph?" and he took my not unwilling hand. "To be sure; but do me one little favour in return." "Anything, anything, Ralph--I'll never mast-head you again." "Oh, I was not thinking of that; I ought not to have put you in a passion. Punish me--mast-head me--do anything, Captain Reud, but call me not bastard." He made no reply: he pressed my hand fervently; he put it to his lips and kissed it--on my soul he did: then, after a pause, gently murmured "Good-night;" and, as he passed into the after-cabin to his bed, I distinctly heard him exclaim, "God forgive me, how I have wronged that boy!" The next day we were better friends than ever; and for the three years that we remained together, not a reproachful word or an angry look ever passed between us. I must be permitted to make three observations upon this, to me, memorable transaction. The first is, that at that time I had not the power of retention of those natural feelings of anger, which all should carry with them as a preservation against, or a punishment for, injury and insult. I know that most of my male, and many of my female readers, will think my conduct throughout pusillanimous or abject. My mother's milk, as it were, still flowed in my veins, and with that no ill blood could amalgamate. All I can say is, that now I am either so much better or so much worse, that I should have adopted towards Captain Reud a much more decided course of proceedings. My second remark is, that this captain had really a good heart, but was one of the most striking instances that I ever knew of the demoralising effect of a misdirected education, and the danger of granting great powers to early years and great ignorance. With good innate feelings, no man ever possessed moral perceptions more clouded.